When he got back to London that evening an air-raid was in progress. There seemed to be one every night now. It was December 1940. There was no hope of getting a taxi at the station, so he left his kit there and walked through the deserted streets to his club. There were sounds of distant explosions, but the streets through which he walked were as quiet as they were empty. A gentle drizzle was falling. When he reached his destination he was damp and very tired. It was too late for dinner. He ordered some biscuits and a drink. Some members were playing billiards, others were watching them, and making unfavourable comments on their play. A friend came to sit by Willie and talked to him about racing. They had a drink together and then another one. Willie began to feel warm and at ease. The physical well-being spread from his senses to his mind. The regiment had gone but there were still good chaps in the club. The hallporter dame in to warn them that it was nearly closing time. He could not bear the thought of his lonely flat. Was there nowhere they could go on to? he asked. Somebody knew of somewhere – an underground night club, which was sure to be open. They had another drink, and three of them went on. It was far from being a first-class establishment. The jangling music, the tawdry decorations, the tired faces of the girls, brought back to Willie the mood of acute depression from which he had been escaping. Another drink only intensified his gloom. Two of the girls were sitting with them. They knew his companions and they had mutual friends of whom they talked. Willie tried to take part in the conversation, but whatever he said sounded stilted and dull. He wished that Horry were there. Horry always got on with everybody. He knew how to break the ice. Did either of these girls know Horry? Or had they known him, rather, because he was dead, killed in the war. He was an actor but he got killed in the war. Funny thing. He would order another bottle so that they could all drink Horry’s health – drink to his memory, rather – no good drinking his health now. Too late. How curious it was that even talking of Horry had helped to break the ice. He was getting on well with the girls now. They were nice girls too, and seemed sympathetic. He had no wish to go home with them, but he needed friends. Why shouldn’t a man be friends with girls of that sort? He thought of Felicity and wondered where she was. He knew. She was driving round London, serving her country wherever the bombs were falling thickest. And the regiment was now at sea, going out to the war, hunted by submarines and enemy aircraft. And here was he, sitting half tight in a night club, talking to tarts. ‘But it is not my fault,’ he muttered to himself, ‘God knows it is not my fault.’
Willie had eaten little all that day and, although he had forgotten it, he was very tired, so that the wine was too much for him, and he had to be helped to bed.
When he awoke next morning to a dark December day and found himself in his bleak, ill-kept bachelor flat, with no very clear recollection as to how he had got there, he felt that he had reached the lowest rung on the ladder of depression. There was even a moment when he contemplated putting an end to his life, but he remembered having once heard his father say that to commit suicide was the act of a coward, and therefore, whatever fate might befall him, he knew he must face it rather than run away.
He was disturbed about his behaviour on the previous evening. He was not in the least ashamed of having been drunk, but he remembered talking about Horry, and he was afraid that he might have been maudlin and lachrymose, which he would have considered contemptible. For some time he lay on his back contemplating the misery of human life. Then he rang for breakfast and telephoned to Felicity.
‘Willie speaking. Have I woken you up?’
‘No, dear idiot, it’s just struck eleven.’
‘What sort of a night did you have?’
‘Pretty foul.’
‘Were you up very late?’
‘No, the all clear went at 2.30. What were you doing?’
‘Well, I stayed up pretty late, and I don’t remember hearing the all clear.’
‘Tight again, I suppose.’
‘I don’t see why you need say “again”. It happens very seldom. And if it did happen last night, there was good cause for it.’
‘Why, what’s the matter?’
‘You know those chaps I was staying with, up in the north. They have all gone away and they’ve left me behind again.’
‘Oh, my darling!’ she cried. ‘No wonder, no wonder. What can I do for you?’
‘Can you dine with me to-night?’
‘I can and will. I have two nights off. I get them every fortnight, you know. I had thought of going to rest in the country, but I hate the country at this time of year. So we’ll dine together in that deep underground place in Berkeley Square where you can’t hear the bombs, and we’ll forget all about the war for once.’
‘You’re an angel,’ said Willie. ‘I had just sent out for a pistol to shoot myself. I’ll countermand the order and meet you there at eight. I shall be waiting with the largest and coldest martini ever manufactured.’
Having eaten his breakfast and dressed, Willie set forth for his club, fortified in body and soul. He found one of his last night’s companions, and eagerly asked him:
‘Did I make a fool of myself last night?’
‘Not more than usual, old boy.’
‘I was feeling a bit depressed and I was afraid I might have got maudlin.’
‘I think you asked one of those girls to be a sister to you, and you told the other she reminded you of your mother.’
‘I can’t have said that,’ protested Willie, ‘because I never saw my mother.’
‘Oh, it may have been your grandmother, but you didn’t make any suggestion to either of them that really interested them.’
‘No, I know I didn’t. I was very tired and I hadn’t had any dinner, so I got a bit muzzy, but I remember everything really. It was very good of you to see me home.’
‘Oh, I’m glad you remember that,’ said his friend – ‘but it happened to be George who saw you home, and he put you to bed. I felt it my duty to look after those poor girls.’
The chaff that followed made no impression on Willie. His volatile spirit had risen at the thought of dining with Felicity, and looking forward to it made him happy for the rest of the day.
He was first at the rendezvous that evening. He usually was. He ordered double martinis, poured them both into one glass, and ordered another. Then he sat down to wait.
‘Hullo Willie,’ he heard a voice say. He sprang up gladly to welcome Felicity, and found himself looking at someone whom for a moment he failed to recognise. Then he saw that it was Daisy Summers. They had not met since her elopement. She had changed so much that Willie forgave himself for his delay in recognising her. She had lost her prettiness, but she was still good looking, although her face was hard and lined.
‘I am so glad to see you again, Daisy,’ he said. ‘I’m waiting for someone, but she’s always late. Won’t you sit down for a minute and have a drink?’
‘That’s very sweet of you, Willie,’ she said. ‘You always were very sweet.’ She sat down. ‘Your girl friend seems to have a healthy thirst, judging from your preparations. I’ll have a whisky sour if I may.’
‘What’s your life now, Daisy? Are you happy?’
‘Yes, I’m pretty happy, thanks. I don’t think anybody’s very happy, do you? I’ve been working in the postal censorship since the beginning of the war. One feels one’s doing something, but it isn’t much.’
‘And er – your husband?’
‘Oh,’ she laughed, ‘I suppose you mean the Coper. That didn’t last long. I’ve been married since then. I heard from the old skunk the other day. He’s living in Ireland, and says it’s very nice to be a neutral.’
‘He’s much too old to fight,’ said Willie. ‘They tell me that I am, and they won’t let me go out.’
‘Poor old Willie! You always get the dirty end of the stick; I ought to have married you if I hadn’t been a silly little fool, and a bitch. And you never have married, have you? Well, I expect you’re wise.’ She looked at him reflectively for a moment – ‘We might go out together one evening.’
‘I’d love to,’ said Willie, but he didn’t sound as though he meant it, so she shrugged her shoulders and said, ‘There’s my boy. So long, Willie,’ and walked over to an overdressed young gentleman who was waiting impatiently at the door.
Willie sat down again and finished his cocktail. ‘Poor old Daisy!’ he thought. ‘She was never a bad sort at heart. She was just fascinated by the Coper. I wonder how it would have turned out if we had married. She seemed to regret it just now. We might have had a lot of children. It would make one feel less useless if one had brought some decent people into the world. It would be interesting to discuss it with her. I might have been more welcoming about her suggestion that we should go out together. I’ll go over and speak to her, if only to irritate that young puppy who’s with her. Why isn’t he in uniform?’
Willie strolled across to where Daisy and her friend were sitting.
‘Daisy dear,’ he said, ‘you suggested our going out together but gave me no address except the postal censorship. What do I do? Ring up the Postmaster-General and say “Please put me through to Daisy” – because I don’t know your surname?’
‘Silly Willie,’ she laughed, while the over-dressed young man glared furiously. ‘We’re not under the Postmaster-General but the Minister of Information. Here, give me your pencil,’ she said to the young man, who sulkily produced a gold one. She scribbled on the back of the menu. ‘Here you are,’ she said. ‘Name, address and telephone number. Mind you don’t lose them, and mind you make use of them.’
As Willie returned to his seat, Felicity arrived. ‘Who were you talking to?’ she asked him.
‘An old school friend of yours, Daisy Summers. Do you ever see her now?’
‘Never, and I didn’t see much of her then. She’s made rather a hash of her life, I’m afraid.’
‘What has she done?’
‘She didn’t stay long with that Irishman she ran away with. I doubt if they were ever married, but they pretended to be. Then she did marry somebody quite nice, but it didn’t go well, and they separated. Now they say she’s being kept by that little Argentine.’
‘How dreadful!’
‘Oh, I don’t know. I dare say she’s quite happy.’
‘I’ve promised to go out with her one night.’
‘Don’t let her seduce you.’
‘Would you mind, Felicity, if she did?’
‘Not if you promise to tell me all about it.’ This hurt Willie. She often hurt him without knowing it.
‘Well,’ he said, ‘if you’ve quite finished that enormous cocktail and can still walk, we might go over to our table and have some dinner before closing time.’
She had made no comment on the cocktail. This also had disappointed him. He would prepare things to amuse or please her and she would fail to notice them.
As they sat down at their table she said, ‘I think it’s going to be a bad night. The moon’s nearly full and there are no clouds. I’m glad I’m not on duty. By the way, have I seen you since the bombing of London started?’
This was the third unintended blow she dealt him. The dates on which he saw her were engraven on his heart, and the days between impatiently counted.
‘Of course you have. We had luncheon together in October, and I saw you for a few minutes when I passed through London last month.’
‘Of course,’ she said absently, and he knew that she had no memory of those meetings. Then, as though recollecting herself, she turned to him impulsively. ‘But tell me about you. They’ve left you behind. Aren’t they devils! I’m sure it’s all the fault of that evil Hamilton. But I’m glad I’ve got you still here – darling. I know I’m selfish.’
All Willie’s irritation vanished, forgotten for ever, and he was the happy lover again. So he was able to talk about his disappointment calmly and to discuss the possibilities of invasion, which he had to admit were diminishing. He found that her sympathy really comforted him.
They heard faintly the sound of explosions from time to time, and the head-waiter whispered to Willie that a popular restaurant with a dancing-floor had been struck. He told Felicity, who said, ‘Lucky we didn’t go there to-night.’
‘I wish you could get some more reasonable job,’ he said.
‘By “more reasonable” you mean safer. I’m beginning to wish so, too. I’m not very brave, you know. And I don’t find that I get any braver. It’s rather the other way round. I suppose nerves, like everything else, wear out.’
‘I heard of a job in the country, near where the regiment was, which might interest you.’
‘Oh no,’ she said at once, ‘I can’t leave London. That would be running away. You may think it silly, but that’s how I feel – and I think one’s own feelings are the best guides one has as to what is right or wrong. I do lots of things that people think wrong, and I don’t feel guilty, but if I left London I should be ashamed for the rest of my life.’
‘I don’t believe you could do wrong,’ protested Willie, but she went on without listening to him.
‘And I love London so. I think I love it more than England. If you had seen the people of London as I have this month – the ordinary, little, common, heroic people – so brave, so cheerful and so funny – with all their small treasures that they loved blown to smithereens, and making jokes about it, and sticking up their pathetic Union Jacks on heaps of rubble. And the great city itself, with its poor wounded face, so gaunt and ugly and grand and glorious – and old.’
‘Yes,’ said Willie doubtfully, ‘but I like the country better.’
She looked at him, startled, as though she had forgotten he were there. Then she said, slowly:
‘My darling Willie. I would not have you any different.’
‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘I so often wish I were different.’
‘In what way?’ she asked.
‘Oh, I should like to be witty and brilliant, as I suppose your other friends are, whom you won’t let me see.’
‘Talking of brilliance,’ she said, ‘old Garnet is home again. He’s back from North Africa, where he had quite an exciting time. There’s nothing brilliant about him. And, oh, Willie, he’s grown so old. I can’t bear people to grow old, can you? Of course he’s more than fifteen years older than me, but he is my brother. I suppose it’s the climate of the Far East. He wants so much to see you. I’ll give you his telephone number. Write it down, don’t lose it and don’t get it mixed up with Daisy’s, or there might be trouble.’
She gave him the number, which he recorded in his pocket-book, and shortly afterwards they left. As they went up the stairs which led to the street she turned suddenly from the higher step and, bending down, kissed him on the lips.
The streets were quiet now and the moon was bright, but when they came to Jermyn Street they found policemen and firemen guarding the approach. Willie explained that he lived there and was going home. The policeman asked at which number he lived, and on being told said, ‘I fear you won’t find much of that left, but you can go and have a look. You can’t take the car through.’ Where had stood the substantial building in which he lived there was an empty space through which the moon, that should have cast a shadow on to the other side of the street, shone without hindrance. From what had been the basement smoke and dust were rising, together with the noise of men at work. Ambulances and fire-engines were standing by.
‘Can I be of any help?’ asked Willie of somebody who seemed to be in authority.
‘No, thanks. The bomb fell an hour and a half ago. We have all the help we need.’
‘I lived there,’ said Willie, pointing to the void.
‘You might very easily have died there to-night,’ said the stranger, and Willie, feeling there was no more to be said, returned to the car.
He explained to Felicity what had happened. He had lost everything he possessed in the world, for what he had left in the barracks, that the regiment had recently quitted, had arrived at his flat that day.
‘And what are you going to do now, poor Willie?’ she asked, smiling at him with amusement and love.
‘I’ve got nowhere to sleep,’ he said weakly, standing by the door of the car.
‘You had better come and sleep with me,’ she said. ‘Jump in.’
Half dazed by the sudden event, and still further bewildered by her words, he obeyed her and sat silent by her side while the car sped westwards. It stopped at the entrance that he knew so well.
‘Come in,’ she said. ‘There’s nobody here to-night. I’ll leave the car here. You can take it in the morning – but you must go early and send it back.’
Willie hardly closed his eyes that night. He had no wish to sleep. He did not want to forget, even for a moment, that Felicity was lying in his arms, and that after all these years she had suddenly given herself to him with the sweetest simplicity and grace. But what did it mean? She had always said she loved him. Did she love him more now, and in a different way? She had always refused to marry him. Surely she would now consent? But what mattered most were the precious moments that were passing. Her head was resting lightly on his shoulder. She slept as silently as a child. He must not wake her. How tenderly he loved her now! Surely this precious night made up for all that he had lost in life.
Long before dawn he left her, very quietly. She turned with a little sigh on to her other side and was still asleep. He was glad that she had not woken. He would not have known what to say. He decided not to take the car, but to walk. He had plenty of time and plenty to think about. As he went down the King’s Road, the lurid lamps of night became innocent primroses against the faint morning sky. He felt like a poor man who had suddenly inherited a vast fortune, in which he could hardly believe.
He went first to the site of his flat, in the vague hope of recovering some of his belongings. Any such hope was extinguished by one glance at the scene of devastation. He had then thought to go to his club, having forgotten that it would not be open at that hour. Nor did he like the prospect of arriving in an empty hotel bedroom with nothing but the clothes he wore. Suddenly he remembered that Felicity had given him Garnet’s telephone number. Garnet was the type that would not mind being woken before his time. He turned into a telephone booth and rang the number. A voice answered immediately, ‘Colonel Osborne speaking.’
‘How like Garnet,’ thought Willie, ‘not to waste time saying “hello”.’
‘This is Willie Maryngton,’ he said. ‘Did I wake you up?’
‘No, I’m cooking my breakfast.’
‘Well, cook some more for me. I’ve been bombed out, and I’ll come along as quick as legs or a taxi can take me.’
‘Very well.’